Great Opening Lines - A Challenge List - VOLUME TWO

36. HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES by Salman Rushdie. Contributed by lbangs, identified by tallus: "There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name."

37. GREAT APES by Will Self. Contributed by lbangs, identified by jgandcag: "HoooGraa!"

38. SKINNY LEGS AND ALL by Tom Robbins. "It was a bright, defrosted, pussy-willow day at the onset of spring, and the newlyweds were driving cross-country in a large roast turkey." Contributed by lbangs. Identified by buddy.

39. THE SEA CAME IN AT MIDNIGHT by Steve Erickson. "I want you at the end of your rope, lashed to the mast of my dreams." Contributed by lbangs. Identified by Dave O'Neil.

40. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James. Contributed by lbangs, identified by bertie: "The prince had always liked his London, when it had come to him; he was one of the Modern Romans who find by the Thames a more convincing image of the truth of the ancient state than any they had left by the Tiber."

41. SILENT SNOW, SECRET SNOW by Conrad Aiken: "Just why it should have happened, or why it should have happened just when it did, he could not, of course, possibly have said; nor could it even have occurred to him to ask." Contributed by lbangs, identified by Amy Kessler.

42. SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW by Peter Hoeg. Contributed by lbangs, identified by Jim: "It's freezing - an extraordinary 0 degrees Fahrenheit - and it's snowing, and in the language that is no longer mine, the snow is qanik - big, almost weightless crystals falling in clumps and covering the ground with a layer of pulverized white frost."

43. LUCKY YOU by Carl Hiassen. Contributed by lbangs, identified by Jim: "On the afternoon of November 25, a woman named Jo-Layne Luks drove into the Grab N' Go minimart in Grange, Florida, and purchased spearmint Certs, unwaxed dental floss and one ticket for the state Lotto."

44. DAVID COPPERFIELD by Charles Dickens. Contributed by Jim, identified by jenhowel: "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."

45. HELEN O'LOY by Lester Del Rey. Identified by sk: "I am an old man now, and I can still see Helen as Dave unpacked her, and still hear him gasp as he looked her over."

46. THE ROADS MUST ROLL by Robert Heinlein. Identified by sk: "Who makes the roads roll?"

47. MARS IS HEAVEN by Ray Bradbury. Identified by sk: "The ship came down from space. It came from the stars and the black velocities, and the shining movements, and the silent gulfs of space."

48. BORN OF MAN AND WOMAN by Richard Matheson. Identified by bitterms: "This day when it had light mother called me retch. You retch she said. I saw in her eyes the anger. I wonder what it is a retch."

49. COMING ATTRACTION by Fritz Leiber. "The coupe with the fishooks welded to the fender shouldered up over the kerb like the nose of a nightmare." Identified by Amy Kessler.

50. THE MAGUS by John Fowles. Identified by jgandcag: "I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria."

52. THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH by Gabrile Garcia Marquez. Contributed by Jim, identified by tallus: "Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur."

53. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad. Contributed by Jim, identified by PrBaron4: "He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull."

54. ILLUSIONS - THE ADVENTURES OF A RELUCTANT MESSIAH by Richard Bach. Contributed by kbuxton, identified by Min: "There was a Master come unto the earth, born in the holy land of Indiana, raised in the mystical hills east of Fort Wayne."

55. GIRLFRIEND IN A COMA by Douglas Coupland. Contributed by kbuxton, identified by jgandcag: "I'm Jared, a ghost."

56. WHITE NOISE by Don DeLillo. Contributed by kbuxton, identified by ender22d: "The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus."

57. DARWINIA by Robert Charles Wilson. Identified by cmonster, contributed by kbuxton: "Guilford Law turned fourteen the night the world changed."

58. BEN HUR by Lew Wallace. Identified by lbangs: "The Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north."

59. THE WOMAN IN WHITE by Wilkie Collins. Identified by jacq: "This is the story of what a woman's patience can endure, and what a man's resolution can achieve."

60. THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE by Stephen Crane. Identified by lbangs: "The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army streched out on the hills, resting."

61. MORE THAN HUMAN by Theodore Sturgeon. Contributed by Jim, identified by jgandcag: "The idiot lived in a black and grey world, punctuated by the white lightning of hunger and the flickering of fear."

62. FOUNDATION'S EDGE by Isaac Asimov. Identified by dvcas1: "The first galactic empire was falling."

63. A FALL OF MOONDUST by Arthur C.Clarke. Identified by dvcas1: "To be the skipper of the only boat on the Moon was a distinction that Pat Harris enjoyed."

64. STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert A.Heinlein. Identified by dvcas1: "I always get the shakes before a drop."

Author Comments:

This list is the second volume of this list, which was getting too big to load before our minds started drifting back to what was on t.v., or to considering whether another beer would be too many, or even whether it was time to get back to work.

Two correct. I would prefer answers to give both title and author, and if you know one it isn't too hard to use a search engine to find the other - that wouldn't be cheating. I just entered "helen o'loy" into Google (quotation marks too) and the author's name was on the summary of the very first hit; I didn't have to go any further.

Well, Jim, it's been more than a few week-days, it's been a few weeks, and nobody has taken the hint. Ellison must be feeling like an utter has-been. I'd claim it now, except I've forgotten the story's title, and my sf collection is still largely in moving-house-limbo. Is someone going to beat me to it before I can dig out my copy of D........ STORIES? Only time will tell. Oh my! the suspense.

"Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur."

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull."

Darn it! #48 is in that compilation of short stories by Asimov that I have at home!!!
It's one of my favorite stories in the book, and I think in the forward Asimov claims to be slightly jealous of the author (first name Cyril?) because his first story became a classic. Is that right? Ahh, but I can't think of the name, and I can't check it until I get home!

#48 Born of a Man and Woman by Richard Matheson. Any thoughts on this story and what is being described? It's just so strange a story that I feel like my theory, thoughts, whatever...are just too simplistic.

Re-read done. It's very short, isn't it - almost a vignette. It's simply about a rather gross mutant/monster that has been born to an unfortunate family. They've kept it in the cellar all its life. It's not unintelligent (somehow it's learned to read the old movie mags it's found), and it's naturally starting to rebel against its imprisonment. It's soon going to be strong enough to escape, and its parents' future survival prospects look poor. The story's classic status is due to its very economical telling in an intriguing style.

PLEASE HELP ME to choose the ten best opening lines on this list. Everyone is invited to submit ten numbers, chosen from both volumes of the list, being the numbers of the quotes you think are the ten best. The results will eventually be posted in the 'Author Comments' section. PLEASE NOTE: anonymous submissions will not be counted.

No, you don't have to pick ten, but if you do you stand a better chance of having more of the ones you like included in the top ten.

And here's a confession (for your eyes only, Jim): I concocted this survey as a way of getting around the fact that I don't have the heart to deem any of the quotes 'unworthy' and remove them from the list. I envision that the Top Ten will be a 'purer' version of the existing list.

Oddly enough, I was just looking at the list. came to #38 and said "That's one of the Tom Robbins books I've read." but I'm at work so can't check which one. Scroll down and that much had been figured out already!

Re. # 40: I did use the internet (one of my bookmarked movie sites) to find the answer to this one, but I didn't use a search engine. According to my rules that's not cheating, and I hope you won't consider it to be. Ivory makes Golden Bowl - he's a class act. The answer is THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James, brother of the pragmatist philosopher.

"So how does one identify an opening line within the rules? - well, by recognizing it or by having a hunch (or following one of the challenger's hints, if any) and finding it by looking through actual paper books. Use of search engines is out, but if you used one of the library sites to confirm your hunch about a quote, that would be okay."

Thanks, Jim, but the matter won't really be resolved for me until I hear from lbangs. He's pretty strict with himself (didn't want to claim an answer because it was gained from cinematic rather than literary knowledge), so I won't blame him if he's strict with me too. When I say use of search engines is out, I mainly mean putting the actual quote into one.

#54 is...Illusions-The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. One of my all-time favorite books by Richard Bach. Funny how books come into your life at the time when they are supposed to and when they are most meaningful...

Welcome to The Listology, Min. Jim, whose site this is, has been very busy in the real world lately. About your answer: I can't confirm it, so we'll have to wait for the challenger to get back to us. Hope you'll feel like contributing some lists - maybe when you've explored the site a bit. There's lots of interesting stuff here. Enjoy!

Sounds familiar, jim. It's an sf story, I think (it would nearly have to be sf for me to recognise it).

Ah, yes, I know it. Just went to my bookshelves to confirm. But this is too much of a gift. Before I claim it I'll give others a chance with the following hints. It's the author's best-known novel, and its author inspired another author, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, to name one of his characters "Kilgore Trout".

Correct on #57, and THE MAGUS is a very engrossing read, btw, I recommend it. There are two versions of it, it was an early work (Fowles' first or second novel, I think) and he published a re-written edition because wanted to correct its youthful imperfections.

I believe you are also correct on #61, but Jim has the final say on that. 'Nice' isn't the word I would choose to describe MTH - I found it rather intense. But Sturgeon was among the very best writers of 'soft' science fiction.

I am certainly interested, but also cautious. Ivory's last few films (Surviving Picasso, Jefferson in Paris, etc.) actually verged on being what his earlier films were unfairly accused of being - boring as all getout. Hopefully, this film will prove better. If he is sticking to the book (which, of course, he needn't do), the casting is interesting and borders on inspired. He certainly chose one of the very best English novels ever to work from. We'll see...

...but while I'm here #62 has to be from the Foundation and Empire books by Isaac Asimov - the phrase is used in the preamble to the early ones, but prefixed with "When" so I'll go for Foundation's Edge

You got the Big Three: Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein. Good to see that fans of classic sf are not yet extinct. I expected these three gifts to be snapped up much fastly, but they've been on offer for...must be over a year.

My thanks to you for closure on this moribund list...unless you'd care to issue a challenge.